Singapore looks like a nursery.
Everything is monitored and everyone is well dressed. Noone breaks any rules and cleanliness is the way of the world.
The country is rightfully positioned as a world city and is truly integrated into the global economy. Many ads for basic products like housing and shopping use expat models. Food is truly multi-cultural. Having faced tough choices about food in most of South East Asia- HongKong, Kaula Lumpur, Macau, Bangkok and China , Singapore was a breeze- basic edible fare with vegetables was available everywhere- including in the Jurong bird park and Sentosa island. The good Orchard hotel which hosted us( cost quite a packet though) had an Indian menu everyday.
Patches of Singapore look like Chennai - Little India for sure with its zillions of tamilians and the ananda bhavans and banana leaf restaurants ; while some parts reflected the city's multi-ethnicity - Chinatown with white-as-paper chinese people and the consistent smell of fish oil and Arab street with its Malayasian Muslims.
The city cheekily advertises itself as a fine city- full of fines - fines for smoking, traffic, spitting, importing chewing gum to get people in line. The best control for rush hour is to fine the drivers - there is a 30% surcharge for peak hour traffic and a 50% surcharge on taxi fares on weekends.
At 41 rupees to a singapore dollar, it is expensive as taxes account for 5-10% of the rate. A bottle of water is 8 bucks and any cab ride spills into hundreds. The city-country is also trying hard to catch up with Malaysia and HongKong to get tourists with investments in resort city etc. The 120 page Strait Times also chronicled the post-recession problems of Singaporeans, the issues with expats and the aspirations of the local population. The stock market was rebounding and was in good shape while the bank interest rates stayed close to the 1% mark.
The other intersting thing was the continual re-development - each building had been torn down every couple of years to make way for a more smarter,slicker building keeping the city chic 24X7.
With only a 700 sq km area and a population of 27 million, geographically, its only a patch on Mumbai, forget matching to India's size.
Like the taxi driver driving us to Jurong on Ayer Raja Expressway said, you can finish Singapore in 4 days, but even in 4 years, you will only know so little of India.
How true !
